Mundane turned miraculous

Upon the death of our trees, I learn the Hebrew word for orchard is paradise

I’ve grown up watching my father eat apples

straight off the trees. 

His mouth wide, 

he’d take one giant bite, 

tearing the skin,

exposing the belly,

carving out one side of the round, crimson masterpiece 

with the sharp of his teeth.

Then, baring the pearl white

of its insides,

and without noticing his own arm,

he’d toss the fruit

a few rows behind him, an offering

of half-eaten McIntosh, 

Ida Reds, Galas, Spys.

We could afford this.

They were ours.

We could take only one bite and

throw it down, throw it back.

We had no reason to finish every bite,

to eat all the way to the core, to the seeds. 

~

I wrote this poem in 2001, before kids, before Tim, before college graduation. It was about that time that I started writing about my family's apples, our trees. My grandpa was an apple farmer, and when the orchard he managed (but never owned) closed up, when the equipment was auctioned off piece by piece, when the fall came and no one was out picking, I became keenly aware of how much of me and my family was wrapped up in that land, of how those rolling acres were the setting for so much of our story. 

Now, several years later, my mom and dad have planted apple trees on nearly every available inch of their land. And so, when I get to witness my boys playing on the farm, picking apples, or riding the tractor with Papa, I well up with gratitude. 

This weekend, as I watched my three little guys scurrying around the cider room, helping to make a fresh batch, I remembered the words I wrote late at night in that college dorm room twelve years ago:

The miraculous can be so close to mundane that we often miss it. 

I’ve grown up watching my dad grab a fresh apple off a tree, take one giant bite, and then throw it back into the tall grass surrounding another row of Spies, Ida Reds, Galas.  It seems he would do this without even noticing the apple, or maybe with the deliberate arms of a man who knew he could take only one bite, a kind of taste testing of a masterpiece. 

I’ve started to take pictures of them now, of the trees, of the apples, of the baskets we carry them in.  I’m terrified of losing them. My kids may not grow up with the indulgence of taking just one bite, then throwing the apple back, knowing there are millions more hanging on the trees.  They may not get the chance to go for rides in the back of the pickup truck on Sundays, with their Grandpa driving, aunts and uncles and mothers and fathers sitting on the back of the cab, ducking under low-hanging branches, getting off while Grandpa tries to drive the raggedy truck up the hills.  They may not be hushed to spot a couple of deer nibbling off branches, to be quiet so that everyone can get a glance at the timid creatures before the white tails run, bouncing farther into the trees. They may not know this. They may not live this.

But my kids are living this, and this time – miraculous or mundane – I'm not missing it. This fall I'm extraordinarily grateful not just for the sweet taste of apples, but for the memories my kids are planting – for the the dirt under their fingernails, the holes in their jeans, and sticky chins I'm washing. 

Me, 1981

and my kids, this fall...